John Sevigny talks about Ladies' Bar Redux

Interview by Sidney J. Walker, January 2009

Why did you decide to re-publish Ladies' Bar online?

The project was kindly published online by Alan Griffiths at Luminous Lint more than a year ago. Sadly, Luminous Lint has been inactive for some time now, I'm not sure why. Frank Ward, a documentary photographer and teacher, approached me with the idea of posting something on SocialDocumentary.net, a new site he and a number of other people were starting. I was reluctant to put up work that was almost two years old but Frank convinced me that doing so would give a new audience a chance to see it. There were also a number of photographs that I didn't include at Luminous Lint, or at the exhibitions, because at the time, they didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the photographs. Looking back, I realize I should have included them. So there are five or six "new-old" photographs included in the new version.

Can you give us some background on the project?

Between 2006 and 2007, I spent almost a year taking pictures at really rough dive cantinas near La Calzada Independencia in Guadalajara. At first, I was just trying to capture the atmosphere of these places, full of hookers, drug dealers, and the rest. Over time, I realized what really interested me were the women who worked in those bars. There might be five women and they could keep 50 or 60 rowdy drunks more or less under control. The posessive apostrophe in the title Ladies' Bar comes from an error I saw on a sign outside a cantina in Guadalajara. But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. The bars are for men, but the ladies who work there are definitely in charge.

How has it been received?

You know, famous photographers like Steve McCurry have thousands and thousands of people who know about what they do and are sort of cooly, distantly interested in their work. I'm fortunate to have a much smaller number of people who are intensely loyal and intensely interested in what I do. In that sense it's been received very well, and I've made many good friends through exhibitions, both online and at exhibitions. On the other hand, there have been some disappointments. I was in talks with Charta, a big, Italian company, to publish it as a book. But like any mafia, they wanted a ton of money up front, and to burden me with an absolutely crooked contract. I don't know about other publishing companies, but Charta is a vanity press. If you pay up, they loan you their "good name" and you make all kinds of contacts and get all kinds of shows in Europe and everywhere else. But neither my principles, nor my salary as a teacher would allow me to mail a big corporation tens of thousands of euros with no real possibility of making a profit, so that fell through. Another small tragedy for me is that Ladies' Bar gets treated like a wandering, pus-covered leper in Mexico, where I live. Nobody will show it. The government arts people have said, "We like you, we want to work with you, but not with these pictures."

There's no nudity or anything profane in the photographs. What seems to be the issue?

I'm not sure. I try to make work that is accessible and I think Ladies' Bar is successful in that sense. It's full of emotions that anyone can understand, joy, sadness, desperation, jubilation, despair. But there's something underneath the surface of all my work that makes some people uncomfortable. I've never been able to put my finger on it. Documentary people don't like it because I'm not taking a stand, saying "oh these poor women, look at their plight, let's start an NGO." And fine arts people are confused by it because it's so raw and you could never sell it at a sidewalk sale. I also think there is something not so obvious, that makes my work a little difficult for some people. It's too real, not in the sense that war photography is too real, but in the sense that it's just honest, right in front of you. There is no decorative objective, no attempt to glamorize, and as you mentioned, no nudity. Maybe if I'd just gone all out with the nudity it would have been easier for certain people to understand. In any case, it doesn't matter. I can take pictures and share them with whoever I want. I don't necessarily need publishers or the Mexican government. That's the wonderful thing about photography. It's completely democratic.

One final question: what were some of your best and worst moments in 2008?

Some obviously wonderful ones. Seeing Manny Pacquiao beat Oscar de la Hoya. Watching the Bush era come to an end. Meeting Aristeo Jimenez, a relatively unknown but fantastic photographer from Monterrey, Mexico. Sitting on somebody's balcony during a Christmas party at a house way up in the hills in Saltillo and watching shooting stars whiz across the sky.

More difficult moments? A fight I had with a drug addict on the street in Monterrey. Losing my cell phone in Veracruz. But those are small things. As the song says, it was a very good year.